"Essay examines the unique and valuable contributions of four biological measures -- life expectancy, morbidity, stature, and certain features of skeletal remains -- to understand levels and changes in human well-being..."

The Coming of Agriculture

Agricultural Plantation Slavery

Health and Wealth

Demography Before Modern Economic Growth

What Does It Mean for a Human Population to Grow at Only 1%/Generation?

A hunter-gatherer population?

An agricultural population?

An industrial/post-industrial population?

Nasty, Brutish, and Short

The phrase is Thomas Hobbes’s

Modern standard of living is worth 10 cm.

Practically every non-aristo skeleton from our agrarian past is really short

Exceptions: fish eaters

Exceptions: Souix

Exceptions: Hunter-gatherers

What does being 10 cm. shorter do to brain development?

Demography Before and During Modern Economic Growth

Thomas Malthus (1798), An Essay on the Principle of Population: “Let us imagine for a moment Mr. Godwin's beautiful system of equality realized in its utmost purity…”

William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind

Demography pins the standard of living to “subsistence” as long as technological progress is “slow”